Exchange of Realities

Yesterday, I discussed a villain of mine, one Zora Aldebar. She’s one of my more interesting projects, as she’d been planned ahead—but then ended up requiring practically nothing but improvisation to make work.

I’d originally designed Zora to be a later-game antagonist with a Huge Overarching Plot. The idea was to create a morally gray antagonist that the group would likely strongly oppose but still possibly identify with (or get into arguments about), one with which I could start doing time-sensitive parallel plotlines. Originally, I’d been going to hint at her existence, along with several other plots, in individual chats during a summer-long hiatus, and see how the group responded and whether they could figure out her plot before she unleashed it.

Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work that way. Getting as far as the hinting was easy; our trouble-prone resident crafter, Luath, had gone with his mentor on a simple intervention near her stomping grounds, and it wasn’t too hard to tell him about ’something stirring in the desert’. I should have expected that he’d decide to investigate the situation himself, and… well, long story short, not only did he run into Zora, two weeks before my time-jump itself was going to end (and long before the end of that summer), he managed to get both himself and his mentor captured by her.

There went all my plans.

On the other hand, it had its advantages. Unlike his mentor, Luath wasn’t obviously aligned with the Conspiracy, and was a very fast talker; he managed to simultaneously distance himself from her and help protect her from Zora. (It helped that, according to Zora’s promise to her assistant Nandin, she could be overruled on “Those Matters”, and allowing the two of them to live was definitely one of Those Matters—it also helped that what had gotten Luath’s mentor into the fight was Zora’s initial attempt to co-opt Luath’s help in fixing all the broken artifacts in her basement.) So Luath convinced Zora that he could be on her side. Managed to convince Nandin that being on his side was better than being on Zora’s side. Got in several arguments. Gave me a chance to fully characterize just about everyone involved.

They didn’t actually beat her the first time, either. The rest of the group came bursting in when Zora had two of her defenses up. Since one of her effects was the perpetual counterattack, she was able to both pose a reasonable threat and still stand around using her other powerups, though due to her defenses, people were simultaneously bored by the battle and convinced she was holding back. (The surprise when I explained that she had taken those four rounds to finish putting up her scenelongs was almost worth it.) Then one of the other characters got her guard-demon’s attention, a few other things happened, and the group decided discretion was the better part of valor. When they returned, it was with reinforcements. That time they were successful, disabling the demon and capturing Zora. It let me point out another fact with her; when they had her speak to her guard demon, it showed a level of subservience and attachment that freaked them out at least as much as the fact that she had access to a demon of that kind of power. They haven’t followed up on it, though, more’s the pity.

The one thing that went as expected was the group not quite agreeing on what to do with her, though even that backfired; the rift that that disagreement created hasn’t quite managed to seal, and I sometimes wonder if it ever will. It made for interesting characterization at the time, though. It remains to be seen what happens now; she’s shown signs of repenting, and is currently on a sort of ‘probation’ dealing with Things That Shouldn’t Be and wearing an item that’s supposed to keep her out of trouble.

Overall, a rather diverted antagonist, but a successful one.